


Transposition

by dynamicsymmetry



Series: Footage Not Found [11]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 10:41:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3485195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sees her. She's alive. But he doesn't run to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transposition

**Author's Note:**

> I almost didn't post this, it's so short. But what the hell. I'm a completist. 
> 
> Somehow the idea of Daryl hurling himself at Beth in a sobbing mess just never sat right with me. That might indeed be what happens, but.

He doesn’t run to her. Some of it is that he can’t, not just because his legs suddenly don’t work anymore but because the world itself - broken and warped and distorted - is reshaped and reformed and he doesn’t yet know how to be in it, because he doesn’t know how to be well in a world that’s been healed.

He doesn’t run to her. Maybe the rest of them do; he doesn’t really notice, because all he can look at is her. He looks and he looks and he can’t believe it, and the world being an entirely different shape now is the only thing that explains it. All the rules suspended. Rewritten. All the clocks wound back and everything reset.

He doesn’t run to her. It’s not chaotic. It’s not out of control. Or it is, but very quietly, very silently, and very fast. When he moves he moves by the folding of space; the distance between them is there and then it’s not, and he’s not out of breath because he’s not breathing.

He doesn’t run to her, and he doesn’t grab her or fling himself at her or wrap her up or fall and drag her down with him. He just stands there, staring at her, and she stares up at him and says nothing, but again all the clocks wind back, all the hands spinning, and he has a chance to do it again, do it all again, get it all right this time, get it finished and see it through.

He doesn’t run to her, and he doesn’t embrace her, and he doesn’t kiss her - though later these things might happen. This is a careful moment and his movements are careful, as if this is something that has to be eased into being or it might shatter, and he lifts a hand and touches her face, her cheek and her brow, tracing the lines like roads on a map, finding a path, charting a course and backtracking to where it all began. Touching a fingertip to the scar high on her forehead, so small, like nothing. Like nothing at all.

His hand is shaking. Like it’s about to shatter. She takes it in hers, turns it, threads their fingers together. She knits together the shattered bones of the world, and her smile seals it over.

Somewhere, a clock chimes.

_Oh._


End file.
